Rear Window | How to wear two or more hats

Severo Portela

Regardless of status, or anything else, everybody belongs to a community, either large or as small as the Macau Special Administrative Region, has to play many roles, has to function in more than one capacity, has to wear several hats!

At the individual level, anybody has to adjust, and perform as best they can to this social reality, answering only to himself – unless they happen to have a split personality which is a source of great suffering. In a different sense, issues related to the concept of “conflict of interest”, despite the enormous ethical weight, and its burden of conscience, are to be played and adjusted in the social and political arenas. According to historian Suetonius, Caesar divorced Pompeia claiming, “my wife should be as free of suspicion of a crime as she is from a crime itself”. I raise this as a preliminary note.

The newly inaugurated Legislative Assembly elected chief executive’s older brother, Chui Sai Cheong, to the powerful position of house vice-president by a smashing margin of 29 in 33 ballots. This suggests that almost all lawmakers were more than sure there are no legal issues or conflicts of interest that may cloud the appointment. Speaking to the media on the very day of the inauguration, Chui was open and candid enough to address the lack of any hypothetical conflict of interest by underlining the nature of Macau as just a small community – to the extent that different people have different positions or many positions. “This is very common, so I don’t think it is a problem”.

Later, Chui Sai Cheong himself raised for consideration the possibility that one of the hats he wears as a member of the Prosecutors Committee – ditto the independent ruling body responsible for administrative and disciplinary management of the Prosecutors Office – could represent a conflict of interest. The other hats to wear as director of Chui’s family business, as president of Macau Management Association and much less as a member of the CPPCC are obviously out of consideration.

Indeed, there is no issue other than the perception or the aesthetics of a political landscape, designed with well-defined independence of powers, in which the fact that the VP of the Legislative is the brother of the Chief Executive is considered a non-issue. Perhaps it will be wise to give a thought on the inscription: perception is reality!

To make matters worse, or the perception obscure, the re-elected president of the Legislative Assembly, and political heavy-weight, Ho Iat Seng promised to further or tighten the scrutiny of the government… a duty that depends largely on the ruling, managing and tabling powers of the Executive Board: Ho Iat Seng is the president re-elect, Chui Sai Cheong the new vice-president, Kou Hoi In and Chan Hong are respectively the first and the second secretaries. Each of the four are indirectly elected legislators representing functional constituencies. This is real conflict of interest.

The Executive Board has no seat for a directly elected lawmaker, despite being not only the major block in the house (14 direct, 12 indirect, 7 appointed), but also the one which is supposed to grow as the political system gradually develops.

Furthermore, this exclusive Executive Board seems to feed on the existence of systemic paternalism that allows a rather opaque process of selection of the Legislative Assembly Committee on House Rules, Standing Committees, Monitoring Committees and, when needed, the Provisional Committees.

As we said above, Chui Sai Cheong’s selection to the Executive Board is no less a question of conflicts of interest than the ones hanging over scholars, academics or professors. This is about perceptions!